Below the Skin
by Kshar
Summary: *Updated, Part 3* Arwen et. al. in the years after The Return of the King.
1. One

Below the Skin  
by Kshar

Disclaimer: Characters are the property of the estate of J. R. R. Tolkien, and  
are used without permission. No profit will be made.

1.

***

I wondered why you never looked back, she said. If one day you would turn around and say, I thought once there was someone here.

***

It is such a seductive lie, this 'happily ever after'. I stood and looked out of this window, out over walls and scattered stones and buildings to the hills, weathered soft against the ropy spectres of darker trees, and the mountains beyond. Time creeps on heavy feet. Such a timeless fool I was to imagine it would be otherwise.

The sun shone water to steam on the walks below, glinting bright as I watched so that at times I had to avert my eyes, for it hurt me. It was, however, good to see the sun again after such a long cold year, so I tried not to look away, instead blinking away the water from my eyes.

A curse this is: this idle waiting. For months and years I have counted each moment slowly, with my fingers wrapped around the drape. It happened at times that as I stared out, my eyes on everything and nothing, that I would see something else than Gondor, something other than the black specks of the returning men in the distance, and feel the shift of sand beneath my feet.

Earlier my thoughts had been interrupted by one of the maids, coming to inform me that the tower guard had sent word of the King's return. I had nodded and dismissed her, intending to cross the room and gather my cloak and go out. But the window caught me up again, and I stood and thought, and thought more, realising even as I did that I was substituting this for action.

Finally it was, though, that I could wait no more, and I gathered myself to movement.

I met Calimo the keeper on my way, he having been persuaded by one of the cooks to stop and take some wine before walking out to meet the King. He rose slowly when he saw me, leaning on the chair for support. His leg must have been painful indeed that day: I could not remember the last time I had seen him move so gingerly.

He bowed carefully with his eyes on me. His dark hair was tousled, as though he had been caused to leave behind some strenuous work.

'My lady Queen.'

'Calimo,' I said, and began to feel a little better. 'Have you heard the maids speak of seeing my son yet? I fear he has strayed again.'

'I saw him heading for the garden myself. I told him we would meet him there.'

I hid my frustration at hearing this, as I had been irritated at Eldarion for disappearing for an entire morning, provoking as it had my own frustrated search for him inside and out in the gardens before I resigned myself to waiting. The maids had helped me search even as I thought I could hear them whispering to themselves. They do not understand, but lately it seems I am filled with fear whenever my son is not close to me. I start to twitch when I do not see him, and my mind speaks terrors to me that he will be lost, and I will be left alone.

'Shall we walk?'

I started, surprised back into the present. 'Of course. Need you your cane?'

He shook his head firmly. I did not pursue the matter further, but walked slowly beside him, listening to the difference in the sound of our footsteps; mine sharp, his soft and sliding. I offered him my arm as we approached the stairs, but he looked at me askance.

'Your majesty, it is not proper,' he told me, and in his voice was the attention to manner that only interests the very young, who have not yet learned how very dull properness can be. Instead, he stepped awkwardly sideways, one hand leaning on the wall. I followed, picking over the old stones worn almost to treachery at the edges, and thought to myself for the thousandth time that I really must have something done about these stairs.

'Always you tell me, Calimo,' I said, raising my voice so that he might hear me as I walked behind him, 'Of what is proper for the Queen of Gondor. One would think you imagined me unsuitable for my position.'

He stopped and turned to me so abruptly that I had to make a step back to avoid walking into him and knocking him down the stairs. I could see his eyes in the candled gloom. 'My lady Queen, I did not mean to say such things to you. I have overstepped, and my intention was not-'

'Be still; I was but teasing you. There are few who serve the King that I hold as dear as you, and I value that I might speak plainly to you, and I hope also you to me. We have known each other long enough now, have we not, that you might consider me friend above wife of the King?'

His thin face reddened, and he spoke more apologies, which I brushed aside as accepted, and he then peppered his speech with much nonsense about my fairness and nobility, which I politely ignored. Indeed, we had known each other some years, though for which of us the years had gone longer, I could not say.

Eldarion was romping in the garden with what looked like one of the maids' children, but he stopped his game when he saw us and ran up to me to encircle my waist with his small arms. He turned up his face to me, and I leaned down and kissed his brow; his skin soft as powder against my lips. He was scented of fresh grass, and had a smudge of green on his pointed chin.

'Where have you been this day, my son?' I asked him. 'I was set to send the hounds in search.'

His small brow creased, in mirror of his father, or mayhap yet my own father. 'Naneth, it was necessary that I patrol the city this morning, for it seems to me that with the coming of the fair weather, fell spirits are abroad.'

I forced myself to keep my face stern while my tiny son told me of the important duties he had fulfilled. 'Eldarion, the city has plenty of guards, and you are not one of them. I would have you stay closer to home, and also have you tell someone where you will be, that I will not spend the day worrying after you.'

He had the grace to look abashed, and muttered his apologies. I found a cloth in the pocket of my gown and spat in it and wiped his face clean, though he made a face and tried to wriggle away.

'Your shirt is muddy,' I told him with a sigh, and he looked down at the stains as though they were some kind of magic new to him. 'Yet your father approaches, and I think it may be he would rather see you scruffy than not at all. Bid your friend goodbye, and come with us if you would meet the King as he returns.'

Eldarion waved to his small friend and bounced beside me without another backward glance. I took his arm and slowed him at first, in respect of Calimo's pace, but soon gave up and let him skip around us, chattering like some woodland creature. I often found Eldarion frustrating in this mood, preferring instead to remember him quieter, such as when asleep. But Calimo was smiling one of his rare smiles, and he answered the boy's questions patiently and watched with amusement him leaping clay-coloured puddles of water with the fanfare of one crossing a giant river.

As we walked the streets the people watched us, or more correctly watched Eldarion and I, and bowed or curtsied before us, rarely meeting my eyes as I smiled or murmured greetings back. It was not as it would have been with my own people, I found myself thinking, and remembered with an ache the warm greetings and touches that would have been bestowed on me had I been walking through my own Imladris of old. But sharply I caught myself in this thought, for this was not Imladris, and I was not among my elvish people, and surely the span of so many years should be enough to start me thinking of this place as my own.

'Were you not watching for the King, your majesty?' Calimo asked me, limping through soaked ground and then turning to offer me his hand in assistance, which I did not need but knew better than to refuse.

'I fear I do not understand your question,' I said, gaining time.

He looked at me hard, and held my hand an instant too long. In return I fixed my eyes ahead. 'I know that you spend much time looking to the hills when the King is away, and I know also that your eyes are good. Had you looked any time in the last several hours, you should have seen the party approaching, and you may have ridden out to greet them, as you have done in the past.'

'I was busy with my embroidery,' I told him. 'I had not time for looking at the window.'

'Hmm,' he said, and appeared to think on this, but we had reached the gates and the riders were upon us, and he had no chance to continue.

The King and his men made a blazing spectacle of noise and motion; they looked tired and lucent and happy. The standard bearers rode to one side; their horses, pleased to be home, pulled at their bits with new energy. Ladies came forward to greet their husbands, children to their fathers. Aragorn was riding in the centre of the crowd, which I privately considered unkingly, but about which he felt strongly for reasons of morale.

The horse Roheryn had dropped weight, and so, it seemed, had his master. My husband's face was thinner and wearier than I had seen it in some time, but I had difficulty in seeing his eyes to determine his mood, for he kept his gaze not quite on mine, even up until he turned his head to dismount.

Still when I see him the world stops.

After he straightened up and turned to us, however, he saw Eldarion and laughed and reached down to embrace him. Then he straightened and regarded me. He leaned forward to kiss my cheek, then drew back quickly to slip the knotted reins over Roheryn's head. Eldarion reached for the reins, but Aragorn drew his hand away.

'No, my son, I would lead my own horse today. But I would have you walk with me.'

I walked on the other side of the horse, reaching under his mane to scratch his neck with my fingernails the way he liked. Roheryn twisted his head toward me as he walked, leaning into my touch, and I was cheered a little to watch him. We walked together to the stables, the four of us, and Calimo walked behind and hummed to himself some tuneless song.

Eldarion, thoroughly over-excited and thoroughly insufferable, ended his day early in bed at my request. He complained long and loud, and the King, I think, was disappointed, but I would not be swayed.

It was only after I had seen him to bed and Aragorn and I sat down to early dinner that I realised my mistake. A child is a thief of gravity; a giver of light, and we badly needed him in our darkness. The tap of spoon against bowl was deafening.

I cast about for some topic. 'Think you, then, that this last venture went well? That you may not need to leave Gondor again for a time?'

'Venture?' he repeated, placing his spoon on the dark wood of the table, and looking across at me.

'You would have me call it something else?' I asked, confused at his tone.

'I would not have you call it anything at all, Arwen. You need not concern yourself with matters of state.'

'With what should I concern myself, then? With my home, my son, my husband? My home and child are well under control, thank you, and...' my voice trailed off.

'And?' he prompted me, his face impassive.

'And...' I began, my voice rising, and then I paused and thought sadly, and not for the first time, of how things had changed. 'And it matters not. You are correct, matters of state do not interest me.'

He watched me for a moment before dropping his gaze. 'Calimo has tended the gardens well,' he finally offered, in peacemaking.

I nodded, and let the conversation lapse. All sound escaped outside, where it might avoid our company.

My people sleep in short spells, lightly and without true dreams. Since I came to Gondor, though, I sleep long and hard; soaked in sleep, inebriated by it until it casts me aside. It turns my bones to lead and weighs me to the earth, but still I crave it like one kept long underground craves the light.

It is frustrating, then, to lie long awake and ache for oblivion, with thoughts running through my head. How wide the span of a King's bed, that I might sit and listen to the rhythm of my husband's breathing I know so well, and breathe in the scent of his sleep, and still be so far from him.

He had found some distraction after dinner; some meeting of the minds. His first night back in the city, and so much to which he must attend. I sat and sewed and listened to my thoughts echo, and when he came home he acknowledged me with a polite hail and farewell before repairing himself to bed. I gave him good time enough to sham sleep before I went in myself and undressed gracelessly, my fingers stumbling over the ties, my face to the wall.

The moon shone as though calling me, and so I left the candle lit and sat before the window looking at the strange, silvered land. An alien land, I thought to myself. Every so often, I turned to look back to the bed. There is, I suppose, nothing unusual in a couple that has grown apart, even a royal couple. It is almost to be expected, in a callously ordinary way.

I came to think about when first we met, of his immediate and deep love for me even while I held myself aloof. And I thought of my feelings for him now-how deeply I felt for him, and of his feelings for me, and imagined that we may have traded places. What a terrible balance there is in love.

End 1.

-

Author's Notes: This posting-as-work-in-progress thing is all new to me, and I am sore afraid. Please review if you're so inclined: tell me if you like something or hate something, laugh and point at mistakes, share your granny's recipe for monkey bread...


	2. Two

Disclaimer in Part 1. Semper idem.   
  
---  
  
  
2.  
  
  
  
When I woke in the morning he was dressing in the half-light. In the play of shadows I caught a glimpse of his ribby back, and the carved line of his shoulders, and suddenly I desired so much to reach for him, just to touch him, that my throat ached and I had to bite back a gasp of pain. How much I had missed him while he was away. How much I missed him, now that he was here.  
  
Since our marriage we had dressed in each other's presence, forsaking what Gondor considered propriety, or what maids may whisper about me to old women in the streets. I had had my husband beside me; I had neither needed nor wanted a handmaiden to help me dress. Indeed, I had noted after our marriage that his skill in assistance with ladies' garments was greater than I expected, but this was not a topic I had pursued with him. Even in those silver hazy mornings when we had lain together, speaking to hear the other speak, it had seemed an impolite subject to pursue, and I realised in a quiet way how different his life had been from mine. I have never laid claim to wisdom, but well I understood from the beginning that in marriage, some words should go unsaid.  
  
But it had been so long now since I had touched or been touched. Touch, I think, can stave off madness. It comforts in a way that cannot be spoken in words--watch an animal or a child shiver in pain, and lean into your steady hand. The warmth of another soul burns pain in a bright gold instant, and turns it to ash.  
  
I pulled up the blanket, high enough to brush my cheek, and turned that I need not look on him. I heard him pause in his movements just for a moment, as though he would say something. Then I heard his footsteps as he left, and I remained and listened to the sound of my own held breath.  
  
  
  
  
'What age were you in the War, Calimo?'  
  
I was sitting in the gardens, my back leaned against a tree, a thick blanket spread on the damp ground beneath me. I worked on my sewing with half my attention, the rest divided between Eldarion climbing trees, Calimo tending the garden and the pleasure of the broken-glass sunlight.  
  
Calimo ceased in his work and straightened to look at me, leaning on the walking-staff he used in sharp weather or during tiring work. He was thin and crippled, but still he seemed strong, for he had the look of the Númenóreans. Very young, too, he seemed in the golden morning, if one did not see the shadows in his eyes.  
  
'My lord the King asked me that same question, my lady. During the War and afterwards.'  
  
'And what answer did you give him?'  
  
'The same answer I will give you: old enough.'  
  
'Old enough!' I snorted. I held my own suspicions, and if his current age was close to what I thought, he would have been barely more than a child during the War. My husband, however, had told me long ago of this particular soldier's steadfastness in battle, and we two had asked him to come with us and serve us, if it had still been his will. 'Did the battle grow you to a man?'  
  
A sadness crossed his face. 'If anything,' he said, 'I think battle brought me back to my childhood; all hurt and retribution and no heed for the cost.'  
  
I felt shame for my tone then, as it was wrong for me to speak lightly in this. For all my years, there is still so much I do not understand of people. The stories they tell me--the soft cloth of a memory here, a sharp piece of hatred there--never quite add up to a knowing, or an understanding. I want to know why and how. What makes people who they are? What is it they can hear in the rhythm of their blood, when they are alone?  
  
'I fear I know little of such things,' I told him, and any faint, fearful regret in my voice, I think, was disguised by the breeze. It would be foolish indeed to think of the romance of war. I was lucky to be kept apart.  
  
He looked at me curiously. 'Does it seem to you as though you are the only one who does not understand war, and thus are left behind?' he said, shaking his head. 'I was there, and I fear I do not understand it myself.'  
  
At least you had the chance to know it, that you might not be alone, I wanted to say, but I thought of the scars that he carried; scars they all carried. I was silent.  
  
  
A particularly ear-piercing yell from Eldarion reached us. I stood quickly to see whether perhaps he was in difficulty, dropping my sewing in the process, but he was swinging from his legs on a low branch hung new with leaves, looking delighted with himself. His dark hair hung straight down from his head and the end points caught the light and burned it back to me. I exhaled, and the sound was loud in my head.   
  
'Eldarion, cease your noise or you will be sitting beside me for the rest of the day,' I warned him, making my voice imperious enough that he could hear it over his own caterwauling.  
  
I thought I saw mirth in Calimo's eyes as he came to help me recover my cloth. It amused him to watch Eldarion play, and I had suspected for some little time that it also amused him to watch me in my vain attempts to raise the next king as a gentleman.  
  
'I declare,' I muttered. 'I shall have that child's mouth sewed shut before the year ends.'  
  
Calimo found my needle in the grass, and picked it up with careful fingers before holding it out to me, point turned to the side. 'He takes after your people, doesn't he, your majesty?'  
  
I looked at him curiously. 'What makes you say this? What do you know of my people?'  
  
'I have heard tell. I saw them when you arrived first in the city, as you no doubt remember.'  
  
'Likely you would remember that better than I,' I said, remembering how I had occupied myself that day covering my own nerves, and joy, and grief. 'I have never decided whom Eldarion looks like. He has his father's eyes.'  
  
'I was a child in those days,' he said, and the look in his eyes now could not be mistaken for anything less than teasing.  
  
'You are a child now!'  
  
He inclined his head slightly, and in that action reminded me of someone, although I could not place whom it may be. 'It was a long time ago,' he conceded.  
  
'A very long time,' I said absently.  
  
'Why do you never speak of your own people?'  
  
I remembered suddenly how lazy I had been over my sewing, and concentrated hard on threading my needle. 'What would you have me say, Calimo?'  
  
'I was curious only, Queen Arwen.'  
  
I sighed, noting even as I did the careful accent he gave my name: the correct accent, which would normally sound flat in the mouths of those who spoke Sindarin infrequently. 'It pains me a little. It is good to remember, of course, but still it saddens me.' I looked at his face and made myself smile. 'We are morose, today, are we not? Tell me, what would you know?'  
  
He turned back to his work, but stayed close enough in range to make himself heard and to listen to my voice. 'I have heard tell in stories of some Elvish songs; songs they keep for themselves, unmatched by any songs that could be sung by men. Would you tell me something of this?'  
  
'That is an ambitious subject,' I said dubiously, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. 'I fear perhaps I could not do it justice.'  
  
'You are the closest I could get to the source,' he said, and touching those words bled me, but his voice was without malice. And I thought of my past, and even though I had not allowed myself to think much about that past for some time, the memories came unbidden but soft-edged. I sat in my patch of sun and stitched and we talked, and pleasantly enough the morning passed.  
  
  
  
  
Eldarion later insisted that he go to the stables to present Roheryn with an apple he had begged from the kitchen. I had my doubts of the health and well-being of the fruit, given that it had been carried in Eldarion's pocket, which had, along with Eldarion himself, fallen with a thud from a tree on more than one occasion that day, in complete disregard of his mother's nerves.  
  
He held it out in his star-small hand for my inspection: 'It is green, you see?'  
  
I agreed with him, a little confused.  
  
'Would it ripen more,' he asked me, 'were I to leave it longer?'  
  
'I do not think Roheryn will mind. In fact, I think he would rather have his apple green and today than red and days from now.'  
  
'That is very impatient of him,' said Eldarion thoughtfully, and I laughed to hear him sound so serious and wise.   
  
And even as I looked at him with affection, I grieved a little in that moment, to hear him sound a step closer to adulthood. A step closer to leaving me. I grieved for his tiny, sticky hands and his soft cries and his helplessness. I grieved for the heaviness of my breasts and the feeling that we were one being; one breath. I grieved for the rosy mornings and the light before dawn, while I sat wrapped in blankets and he lay warm and blinking in my arms. I never understood what it would feel like to watch my child grow, what happiness and pain there was in knowing that each day he became one day closer to leaving me behind. It is...it is an interesting thing to learn, that a mother's joys are all washed with some sorrow.  
  
  
  
Roheryn was all sharp angles and scapegrace; he had picked clean his feed bowl and appeared to be making a start on his straw bedding. His dark eyes followed us, and he nickered softly to us and leaned out over the stable door, to rest his great head on my shoulder as had been his habit of old.  
  
My son reached up to pat his neck, but Roheryn was just above his reach, that Eldarion could only touch the tangled hair of his long mane. A noise from the outside startled the horse, and he swung his head toward it. I prudently ducked, one hand on Eldarion, and we avoided being knocked cold.  
  
'You move fast, my lady,' I heard my husband's voice, and his steps into the stable, and turned to him. As he walked in, the light from outdoors blazed, and I blinked so my eyes might adjust as he walked toward us in the dimness.  
  
'I know your horse well, my lord Elessar, and time has not slowed his watchfulness.'  
  
He reached us and nodded thoughtfully. Eldarion began to chew at his fingernails, until I reminded him quietly that this was no habit for the son of a King. Aragorn watched us both for a moment before assisting Eldarion in standing on an overturned bucket, in order that he might deliver his gift in person.  
  
'Not like that,' Aragorn said to him softly, watching as Eldarion held out his hand with his fingers wrapped around the fruit. 'Remember, how I have showed you,' and he straightened out Eldarion's small fingers until the hand lay flat, with the apple on his outstretched palm.  
  
The horse took the apple politely and crunched it, and Eldarion laughed, the sound like a breeze in the unstirring gloom. Aragorn smiled as he watched them, but then tempered this with a warning: 'Be careful around him. He is no tame pony for you to play with, and I would not have you bitten. Now. Should you not be at your books? I believe there are letters you should be learning.'  
  
Eldarion quickly bade us farewell and left, and I marveled to myself, and not without some dryness, at how quickly he jumped to obey his father's commands, when he seemed to consider my own commands more rightly requests, or options.  
  
Roheryn happily dripped apple pieces and foam from his mouth, and I straightened a strand of his forelock and spoke reproachfully to Aragorn: 'Roheryn does not bite.'  
  
'He would never bite you,' he corrected.  
  
I stopped to consider this for a moment, but the statement seemed unmade for my mind, and after a time I let it slip away. 'What brings you here? Will you ride out today?' Now I traced the hollows above Roheryn's eyes gently with a finger, feeling the grind of his teeth reverberating.   
'No, I will not ride today. I just came here...' he paused. 'I wanted some time alone.'  
  
'I am sorry,' I said after a moment. 'I will leave you.'  
  
'Arwen,' he said as I turned. 'I did not mean you to leave.'  
  
I hesitated, caught between, and felt my face warm like a child's, and cursed myself for indecision. I moved back to the horse, with whom I seemed better able to communicate.  
  
'When will you be home this night? I mean...' I stopped, and cleared my throat, and thought for a second before trying to make a little more sense. 'Have you much business yet to attend?'  
  
'I do not know. I will see.'  
  
'Well,' I said, and could not think of anything more to say, so I gathered my skirts, preparing to bid farewell myself.  
  
He stopped me with a movement of his hand. 'Must you spend all day with Eldarion?'  
  
I was not quite sure of what he was saying, but I knew that I felt stung. 'Someone must raise him.'  
  
He shifted his weight and stretched a little, languidly, like a cat. I knew this as a mannerism he used unconsciously in arguments he had no intention of losing. 'A boy needs space to grow, sometimes.'  
  
'I give him space,' I said guardedly. 'He grows, but he grows under my watch.'  
  
'Yes, I heard about his tree-climbing this morning. Or should I say his tree-falling?' he said, and was unable to repress his smile.  
  
I smiled a little, in spite of myself, in answer. 'He is less agile than he appears, it seems.'  
  
'He would learn agility more quickly with friends of his age,' he said, quietly, inexorably, and I felt my smile turn thin.  
  
'He needs no friends his age. He has me.' I began to turn, quickly, and Roheryn, beside me, raised his head nervously, and I remembered my manners and looked to my husband. 'May I take my leave?'  
  
'Of course,' he said.  
  
  
  
That night I went to Eldarion's chamber to see him at his bath. He scowled at me, for he hated to be clean, and I knew he blamed it on me that his baths came so often, for left to their own devices the maids would indulge him and let him do as he pleased. Likely until the dirt began to fall off him in weighted clumps.  
  
'You would frighten an Orc with that face,' I told him, and watched his face cheer a little at the thought, before he could repair himself into looking daggers again. He is not, perhaps, an expert yet, but he is a fast learner in covering his mind.  
  
He scowled yet at Tamurile when she returned with fresh night clothes, and she jumped a little to see such a hideous sight, which clearly amused him. I growled softly at him in response, with no particular words, the common tongue of mothers I do not know quite when I learned.  
  
'Did you see the marks on his knees, my lady Queen? He is black and blue.'  
  
'Yes, he fell out of a tree,' I told her, and then amended this to: 'Several trees.'  
  
She looked at me quizzically. 'You were with him, my lady?'  
  
I felt the desire to defend my son, although I had remonstrated with him earlier. 'I was, and though I thought it a foolish pastime myself,' I looked meaningfully at the one we discussed as he dressed himself for bed, 'I think sometimes it is well to fall. It prepares one.'  
  
'Ooor mmmphfr,' said Eldarion with his nightshirt half over his head, one arm stuck straight upwards. Tamurile dropped the linen towel she had been refolding and went to his assistance.  
  
'I fear I misheard you, Eldarion,' I politely said when he was recovered.  
  
'Where is Father? I would bid him good night.'  
  
'I do not know,' I said, carefully and lightly. 'He is occupied. You will see him in the morning.'  
  
I helped him into bed as Tamurile cleaned around the bath and started shipping water. Eldarion fidgeted as I tucked the blankets about him, for he hated to be confined. A new yellow candle dripped and smoked on the bed-table.   
  
I kissed him goodnight and he plucked at my sleeve with finger and thumb. 'Would you tell me a story?'  
  
So I sat beside him on his bed, and smoothed his hair. 'What story would you have, ondonya? The tale of the hobbits?'  
  
'I am tired of that story,' he said. 'Tell me another. With pirates!'  
  
'Pirates? Where have you heard of pirates?'  
  
Suddenly he seemed to have second thoughts about this subject, and would not meet my eyes or speak above a mumble.  
  
'Do not tax yourself unduly to answer me, Eldarion, I think I could guess,' I told him, and slapped his hand as he raised it to his mouth. 'You will have bad dreams if I tell you of pirates.'  
  
He kept his face still, and lowered his hand back to his side, but he looked at me with poet's eyes. Softly he asked, 'Please?'  
  
I sighed, recognising the shape of my own defeat when it presented itself. 'Very well, one pirate. A small one.' And I told him some whimsical story of a pirate boy, prudently including details of the boy's attention to his schooling and respect for his parents in between bouts of marauding. Gradually I saw his eyelids lower and shadows gather on his lashes, and I rose cautiously so as not to disturb him.  
  
'Tell me more,' he said sleepily.  
  
'Tomorrow,' I promised softly, and resisted the temptation to touch his face with my fingertips; gently, gently. 'Sleep now.'  
  
'How will it end?'  
  
I paused with my fingers above the candle for a moment. 'Happily,' I said, and snuffed the flame. 'Happily. Of course.'  
  
  
  
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End 2.  
  
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Author's Notes: My thanks are due to everyone who reviewed the first part, and especially Altariel, for the hand-holding. As always, any comments will be appreciated and taken to heart. 


	3. Three

Disclaimer in Part 1. Semper idem.  
  
---  
  
3.  
  
***  
  
The thunder rolled and crossed the sky and he looked at her, he really looked at her. What is it, he said.  
  
We are dissolved by the rain, she said. One drop can wear away stone.  
  
***  
  
  
  
After I left Eldarion to his rest, I was at a loss to know what to do with myself. It seemed I had an itch inside my skin I could not reach to scratch, and I paced the house in short steps like a young colt confined. I looked at my sewing, but could not bring myself to pick it up and work, and indeed the light was bled by shadow so that everything seemed dimmed. The servants, as ever, stayed out of my way so carefully that it seemed they were no more than apparitions against the dark wood, blinking solemnly.  
  
I tried looking out at the garden, but Isil was caught behind his blanket of clouds, and the wind roared through the trees in a pulse-rhythm that sounded in my head like drums from somewhere far below. I thought I could see the trees bending before the wind, but the night was so black that I could not be sure whether I saw with my eyes or with my mind. Finally I went to sit by the bedroom fire, and Tamurile brought me unbidden some tea, and the fire warmed my face and the cup warmed my hand, and I watched the stories that the flames themselves told me. A kind of muted peace settled over me, and I prepared myself for bed.  
  
The walls creaked and the crumbling ceiling rained tiny bits of dust and chips of stone as softly as breath, floating to earth in the firelight. After a while I closed my eyes so that I would not have to look on these pieces coming home, and I listened instead. My ears are good: I heard the house staff moving about, and the fire crackling, and my husband coming home and lying on the bed beside me. I was still, and breathed deliberately, and my heart beat its own rhythm unheard.  
  
It had seemed I would lie awake all night, the strength in me as cords below the skin. But I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I recall was waking sharply, with the sound of the wind in my ears, and something else: some sharp sound that clung to me. I think I woke and went to stand in one instant, but there was a hand firm on my waist, and I turned to look at Aragorn, who lay awake with one quiet hand about me.  
  
My mind was still addled with sleep, and as I tried to speak I felt as though something rough-hewn and important was slipping out of my grasp. 'I heard...' I said, finally, and with difficulty, the words so large in my small throat. 'Crying....'  
  
'You were dreaming,' he said.  
  
'Nay, I heard...I....' And it dawned on me as my mind became clearer that he was right, that I could not have heard what I thought I had, and I was still. I started to smooth the wrinkles from the blanket about me, and then I noticed my hand shake, and put my hands beneath the covers instead. For warmth. 'I am sorry if I woke you,' I think I said, but I was thinking of something else. Why would he reach out to me while I was asleep?  
  
'I was thinking,' he said, and did not continue. I almost retorted that that was no answer, until I remembered that I had not asked a question. Instead, I bit down on my lip and turned aside and waited for the trembling to stop. After a time I heard his breathing slow, and I rose and took a candle from one of the holders, and I lit it from the fireplace, burning my fingers on the flame because I held it too close. The candle-light flickered as I went out to sit in my son's room. I sat in the chair near the fireplace, and I thought about that hand on my waist, and how deeply I slept now. The candle burned down to a stub. Across the room, Eldarion murmured and turned in his sleep, dreaming his own sea.  
  
  
Time slipped again. The next I knew was the light of the grey dawn in the windows, and rain softly pattering on the glass as though for entry, and Eldarion dressed and in the window-seat, looking out. I had not felt myself fall asleep, had not noticed sleep envelop me. It was bothersome, to say the least, that I had so little control over even my own rest.  
  
I cleared my dry throat, and moved my hand to find I was covered in a blanket, and I stretched a little, stiffly. Eldarion must have seen me move because he turned, realising I was awake.  
  
'What has you awake so early?' I asked him, and my voice was still a little soft with sleep.  
  
He tilted his head to one side, wrinkling his brow in confusion, and I realised I had used a language he would not recognise. He had never heard more than a word or two of it spoken: only my endearments for him and the occasional frustrated exclamation I allowed myself when I had thought he was not around. At the sound of it, something twisted inside me, and I shook myself a little and repeated my question in the Common Speech.  
  
Eldarion's face cleared. 'It is not early,' he told me. 'I have been awake long and talking to Father.' He nodded toward the doorway, and slowly I turned in my seat.  
  
'My lord,' I said, smiling tightly. 'You seem to be making a habit of surprising me.'  
  
He was leaning against the doorpost, and he held a cup in one hand, and he looked more relaxed than it is right to look at any time, least of all in the morning. 'Could it be your perceptions are slowing?' he asked, watching me lazily.  
  
I straightened, and hooked my loose hair behind my ears with both hands. 'It could be that I need to have you fitted with a bell that I might know where you are from a moment to the next,' and though in my mind I intended it as a jest, I spoke sharply. I knew it, and regretted it, in the same instant.  
  
His face did not change, but the look in his eyes cooled. 'I could have my staff provide you with an itinerary,' he said, and he looked at me so intently that I was unnerved and looked aside. My son had seated himself on the bed with one leg crooked beneath him, and was chewing at his lip and raising his hand to his mouth as though not by his own will. I caught his eye and glared at him, and slowly he dropped his hand to his lap, but slowly, as though he expected to be corrected in this, too. Somehow, though, this did not seem enough to me, and I was still annoyed, so I told him to go and begin his lessons, and not to hope of going outside on such a stormy day.  
  
Aragorn began to ask me something about Eldarion's lessons, but then he paused and went past my chair to the wall-hanging above the bed.  
  
'That is new?' he asked.   
  
'Yes,' I said.  
  
'It is beautiful,' he said, and reached his hand out as if to touch it, but his fingers stopped just a hair's breadth off the fabric, following the stitches as though he would commit them to his heart. 'The ship is beautiful.'  
  
'It is the ship that bore Amroth.' He did not answer at first, and it was almost as though he was caught up in the scene, as if his thoughts were far away on other things. 'My kin,' I added, for although I had no doubt he knew of whom I spoke, his silence made me uneasy.  
  
'How long did it take to sew?' he finally asked.  
  
'Three...' I paused, calculating. 'No, four months.' I remembered every stitch. Every tiny detail was mine, each wooden board I had sewn with textured wool and with silk thread. The green sky had come into being under my hands; one breath, one stitch at a time, and the waiting sea. I have never seen the sea, understand, except in drawings, but it seems to work its way into my designs nonetheless. Sometimes I look back on something I have sewn, and I find the sea in an unexpected place: a piece of it in the sky, perhaps, or in a green forest, in the background, or in a slant of light.  
  
'There are no people on the ship,' Aragorn said, and seemed finally able to tear his gaze away, and he looked back; in my direction, but yet not, I think, at me.  
  
'It is Amroth's ship,' I said again. 'Should I have shown him, drowning in his quest to return to his beloved? Crying her name in despair?'  
  
He withdrew his hand, and stepped back. 'That would hardly be a subject to display in a child's bed chamber. But yet the story is a sad one, Amroth and Nimrodel loved each other truly. They were seeking a land of peace: Nimrodel could not live in Lothlórien, so Amroth left his people for her. He made that choice, for her.'  
  
'And she loved the water,' I said. 'And the water killed him.'  
  
'Mmm,' he said, and rubbed a hand over his mouth. Then, politely, he asked me if I would be sitting with our son as he read his lessons today.  
  
Politely, I said that I would not.  
  
Politely, he suggested that he might sit with Eldarion in my stead, and bade me good morning, and left.  
  
Impolitely, I cursed him under my breath, and then cursed myself, and then the house, for good measure, and went to dress. I dressed myself in grey, as the day had, and pulled the hood of my cloak about my face, that I might not be recognised, and I went walking. The rain had slowed and it was soft and cold on my hands and it settled on my clothes, quietly but inexorably soaking to my skin. The streets were mired, puddles turned to treacherous eddies, cart-tracks carved into whirls. My thoughts ached in my head, and one thought in particular. Home.  
  
I did not allow myself to think of it often. Sometimes it seemed I was forgetting my other life, and I could not decide whether I should fear this or embrace it. I have some knowledge of the action of memory--who could live a life like mine, so far removed from that of Men, and not know? I wonder sometimes what it would have been like to be like them. To grow fast, time always breathing at your throat. I suppose my son shall know, or does know, and will feel these things I could never feel. For it seems to me that I am the last left of my kind, with the departure of the ships. Those that stayed behind have now disappeared into their own wilderness: it could be, I think, that my brothers have not yet recognised how time passes here. Perhaps it is not like this for them. Perhaps, if I went myself to find them, I could feel as they feel and find comfort in that; in that sympathy and clarity. This Memory I find in Gondor is a hard creature and cruel, and I have no choice in what I let go and what I keep. It is a difficult thing to let go of my past, of my home, even of the tiny everyday occurrences--the shape of a smile in rain-filled light, the touch of a hand to a face--that must slip through. Especially, it seems, those.  
  
As I walked further, past the Houses of Healing and into the lower part of the city, there were more people on the streets, and they passed me without glancing at me, their faces huddled against the weather. The walls of the streets were blue in the rain, blue with cold, and provided the only colour in the scene, between the white sky and the dark-mud streets. I rounded another corner, and the street opened into a clearing, and the undaunted traders of Gondor had set up tables of goods, and people wandered between them, trying to stay close under the cover of the surrounding buildings. And so the Queen of Gondor went to market day.  
  
There were stone benches set around, and I reached one and sat, and the rainwater on the seat went through my skirt in an instant. The water was puddled beside me, and I reached my fingertips to their reflection, trying to touch the surface without disturbing it.  
  
I was not sure what to do next.  
  
People moved about me so easily; walking quickly, discussing prices, stopping to warm their hands over the half-sheltered fire. They scratched their ears and talked about the weather and argued light-heartedly. I watched as surreptitiously as I could, fascinated and surprised by my own fascination. I felt the strangest feeling: simultaneously close to and alienated from the mass. Even though I sat aside, I was accepted with nary a sideways glance, just another hooded figure among a group. But then, again, in an instant, it was as though I watched through glass, and I recognised the fancy of belonging for what it was.  
  
I sat there until I began to shiver, and then I sat there shivering in earnest for a while. Some of the merchants were packing up their wares and moving on. A slow day all around. The sun came out between the clouds and its pale fire brought light without warmth. My teeth chattered, and I gave up curling my toes in my boots to try to keep them warm and I let them go numb. After a time, a lady in dark and stained raiment approached me where I sat. She pushed back the hood of her cloak, and for an instant in the sunlight her hair, coming loose from its binding, looked like pure gold. I blinked, and the illusion was gone, and once again a worn-looking woman stood there, and her hair was dark, and streaked with white. She said something to me, and it was a moment before I even realised that she was addressing me, and I had to ask her to repeat herself.  
  
'Are you well?' she said, gently, in the tones one reserves for a child, and although this time I at least understood the question, I looked at her confused. 'Fine ladies do not often sit about the streets of the city in the rain,' she added, and this time from her tone I could tell she questioned my sanity. 'Your family will be waiting for you, my lady.'  
  
I murmured something to the effect that I had stopped for a rest while walking, and that, yes, my family would be waiting.  
  
'Ah,' she said. 'Yes, they will be worrying after you, I think. You young ones never keep time in mind.'   
  
I stood up and my sodden cloak and skirt slapped against my legs. I thanked her gravely, and refused her kind offer of transport on her donkey-cart, and went back to my family.  
  
  
---  
End 3.  
  
---   
  
Author's Notes: The story of Amroth and Nimrodel is from the Unfinished Tales, 'The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien'. There are several variations given of Amroth's lineage, so Arwen's claim of kinship may or may not be strictly accurate.  
  
Thank you to Deborah. 


End file.
